It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Yet if I could caption the expression on the faces of the people I pass as we rush around Main Street of my Hallmark-esque, holiday-lit small town—well, it would be: I am freaking merry!

Maybe you can relate? For years I had these holiday goals that I promised myself I would fulfill the following year: Start planning earlier. Start wrapping earlier. Don’t buy so much. Don’t eat so much. Do less. Enjoy more. Don’t get sucked into drama. Focus on what matters!

And every year I found myself getting swept up by the current of holiday excess, being pulled down by the undertow of unhealthy patterns of Christmases past, fighting to come up for air, and gasping for a silent night at the end of the season.

Until one day I said, “No more.”

I wish I could tell you which Christmas it was, but when you operate at that level of exhaustion, they tend to blend together. What I do remember is this: whatever year it was, my husband Ed and I were up until 4 a.m. on December 24th. That evening had already consisted of a candlelight service, followed by the family dinner we had hosted with my parents, sisters, and a few close friends. Now, it was time to get ready for the big day . . . at 11 p.m.

We had four kids under the age of ten, and Christmas was, hands down, the highlight of the entire year. We loved our kids’ excitement, and we did not want to disappoint them. As we tried to get mostly everything on their lists; chose different wrapping papers for each kid, according to their interest; and, of course, motivated the elf to do something festive and funny—we certainly made efforts to make it magical.

The interesting thing is that neither of us had grown up with lavish holiday celebrations. Both of us are the children of immigrants, and we grew up in very different situations but with surprising similarities. Ed was poor, having been born to Puerto Rican parents who moved to the mainland in their late teens. Gifts were not the focus, and he does not recall holidays being stressful or unpleasant.

My parents came here from Sri Lanka in the 1970s as physicians. Planning to move back to Sri Lanka, they saved most of what they earned during our childhood with the intention of creating a better life back home for them and their families. I recall receiving one special gift and a few small ones, but there was no making an extravagant list with the hopes of receiving every wished-for item. Holidays felt happy and joyous. I remember enjoying family time; simply having all of us home together felt special. With two doctor parents, we knew that sometimes holidays meant that one spent the day on call in the hospital, so having everyone at home together was by far the best gift.

Somewhere along the way, however, between our own childhoods and our children’s, Ed and I apparently forgot the wisdom and joy of a simpler holiday. Early on, our holiday celebrations morphed into something quite unrecognizable.

To pull off a festive, detailed, gift-filled Christmas, you really have to begin before we did. Starting to wrap presents at nearly midnight on Christmas Eve is true torture. Every year, I got to that moment and discovered that the pile of gifts to be wrapped outnumbered what I had envisioned. My husband and I would have the same conversation:

Me: “This kid has way more than this one. Ugh!”

Ed: “They all have too much. This is unnecessary. Why did you buy so much?”

Me: “I forgot I had bought some of this. It just gets so crazy. I have to keep better track next year.”

Ed: “We say this every year!” (By we, he means me.)

Midnight on Christmas Day is not the most productive of times. I don’t even know what we were doing that late. Likely finishing up the twelve different kinds of cookies we’d helped the kids leave out for Santa before they went to bed. (I’d also peeled the carrots for Rudolph and his friends—seriously, why do I peel carrots for reindeer? I don’t know, but I do it every year.) And probably perfectly placing the gifts that we had just wrapped around the tree—because three- and five-year-olds really care about the aesthetics of symmetry and pattern, right?

As we crawled into bed, hating Christmas and ourselves, I swear I only closed my eyes for ten minutes before I felt a small creature bouncing on my belly.

“Mama! It’s morning!” (It wasn’t.) “Saaantaaa!” squealed the high-pitched tiny voice.

“Jesus,” I mumbled. I wish I had meant that in the Christmas sense. (I didn’t.)

Later, as my kids got older, they learned my one Christmas rule: we don’t go downstairs before 7 a.m. Now, it’s harder to wake up the teenagers than me. But back then, neither pitch-black darkness outside nor catatonic parents could stop them.

That year I wanted to feel joy. I longed to feel merry. Instead, I could barely lift my head under the weight of exhaustion, dehydration, and sleep deprivation. I sat on the couch, my eyes barely open wide enough to see my beautiful, biracial babies in their fuzzy-footed pajamas, tearing open their gifts with excitement. It didn’t take much in those years to bring them to delirious delight: a baby doll in its crib, a set of colored pencils nestled in a glittery case, a wondrous truck with flashing lights and a piercing siren (which is not wondrous seven minutes later). The sparkle of the fairy lights on the tree paled in comparison to their little faces each time they opened even the smallest of surprises. Before me, beyond the lids of my drooping eyes, was a scene of such childlike joy and wonder, multiplied times four.

Suddenly, I heard the deep, guttural vibrations of my dear husband’s inimitable snore. I looked over at the couch next to me at the source of the auditory assault on the festivities. He’d always been a great sport about my night-before madness, so I couldn’t blame him; I was barely awake myself.

This was not what I wanted for us or our kids. They were growing out of these types of magical mornings right before our eyes. Were we going to let this happen year after year? Get so busy preparing for the holiday that we’d be too tired to actually enjoy it? Were we going to sleep our way—literally—through these days?

Like many low points in my life, this “aha” moment prompted a decision. When I hit these moments, I usually ask myself, “What am I supposed to get from this? What’s the message here?” I’m a big believer that if we miss the message, we will be taught the same lessons, over and over again, until we get it. Look for it when you hit your lows. Those messages serve as life’s GPS directions. We need them to get to the next stop on our journey.

My message that day resounded loud and clear: you are missing it. The goodness, the sweetness, the beauty, and the joy of this season: you are missing it. All of it.

I decided flat out, there on that couch, that no longer would I

• miss it because I was too tired.
• miss it because I was too busy.
• miss it because I was preparing for too many next holiday events.
• miss it because I was distracted by less important things.

I knew that I longed to be present—truly present—to take in the wonder surrounding me.

I see that eye roll. I hear your doubt. Is being present even possible for working parents with kids? Especially during the holidays? To be totally honest, for most of us, being fully present even 50 percent of the time feels impossible. But that doesn’t mean we can’t become more present more often. We can choose the moments that we know we want to hold on to and make sure we show up—awake—for them. It begins with identifying them and then preparing accordingly.

Is every holiday calm and manageable now? Am I constantly full of energy and joy? Definitely not. There are moments of calm, joy, and excitement, and also some of stress and exhaustion. That is holiday normal. But I don’t wrap presents at midnight any longer because I have chosen to be present the next morning. I have made sleep a goal in December. I also say no to things I don’t really care about far more readily than I used to. That took a little practice. Is the holiday perfect now? Far from it. But I’d choose presence over perfection any day.

This is an excerpt from All Is Calmish chapter 1: I Am Freaking Merry!